Jan Roukens * Breaking the Language Barrier: Towards a Multilingual Information Society in Europe

• Validating and distributing European language resources.
  The availability of basic linguistic resources such as electronic dictionaries, speech databases, grammars, etc. is essential for students and many professionals as well as for the integration of language technologies into marketable information products and services. In Europe, more coordination and support are needed, particularly with respect to production, distribution and quality assurance, complementing the role of specialised publishers. A scheme set up by the Commission and the Member States to allow rapid development and exploitation of monolingual and multilingual lexical resources could facilitate the necessary infrastructure development. Furthermore, work on terminology needs to be coordinated on a European scale to cope with the situation whereby at least 50 million specific concepts and terms exist today in some 200 different sectors of scientific, technical and commercial vocabulary. A European Terminology Directory of achievements, ongoing work and terminology organisations could play an important role.
  
  
• An educated and advanced user community.
  In the multilingual information society, language products will be used by citizens (for entertainment and information), businesses (for information, interpretation and translation) and the public sector (for information, translation and documentation), but only if the demand for such products exists. To develop demand, the different groups mentioned need to be aware of the possibilities. Too often, ignorance of what is available hampers the demand for advanced language products. Awareness actions, aimed at specific target populations, can help to redress this situation. Here, the European Commission has a specific role to play. The various European institutions can also, by applying advanced multilingual tools, act as a showcase for the industry.
  
  
• International cooperation.
  Cooperation with non-EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the EEA and the Mediterranean Basin on joint linguistic infrastructure actions, machine-assisted translation developments and general awareness actions has the highest priority, and is expected to lead to a closer medium and longer term cooperation. Balanced cooperation is desirable for the exchange of knowledge and linguistic data with the industrialised countries of North America, Japan, Australia and East Asia. With regard to countries in other parts of the World, where European languages are widely spoken, common development of linguistic resources, tools and applications would be helpful, taking into account the cultural and economic differences between these countries and their EU counterparts.
  
  

The challenges are many. The possibilities are diverse. The rewards will be rich. As the global information society develops, Europe must be ready to play its part and, in doing so, must preserve its identity characterised by a fruitful cooperation of many people with different languages and cultures. Building a multilingual information society in Europe not only creates opportunities for every European citizen to participate; it also ensures a strong position for Europe in the world for the benefit of a culturally and linguistically diverse global information society.

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